


wounds inflicted by careless accident

by rhyol1te



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Era, Don't copy to another site, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Made up medical stuff, No Character Death, description of injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:34:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21843970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhyol1te/pseuds/rhyol1te
Summary: Enjolras, Grantaire, and the rest of Les Amis are practising shooting for their planned revolution.Unfortunately, Enjolras shoots Grantaire.My gift for MagicalDragon for the Les Mis Holiday Exchange 2019!
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 44
Collections: Les Mis Holiday Exchange (2019)





	wounds inflicted by careless accident

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MagicalDragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicalDragon/gifts).



> I haven't actually written much (read: any) hurt/comfort before, but the prompt grabbed onto my brain and wouldn't stop giving me ideas. Hope you enjoy!

Grantaire doesn't fall right away - he staggers to the ground in what seems to Enjolras like far, far too much time. His hand is pressed to his leg.

Enjolras' hand is outstretched, reaching as if he could tear the bullet out of thin air in the scant second it took to -

Grantaire falls, and suddenly the world is no longer still and waiting.

Combeferre and Joly are rushing towards the crumpled shape on the ground, and Enjolras becomes aware that he's been talking. Mumbling to himself, really, a steady stream of "no, no, please, please, let him be alright, please, no -" that Enjolras hopes no one else has noticed. He doesn't know who he's pleading with. He doesn't care. Anyone who happens to be listening will do.

"Enjolras!" Joly yells at him, face as ashen as Enjolras thinks his own must be, "your cravat!"

Enjolras' hand drifts up to his throat. He realises that he's still holding his gun. The gun that -

He drops it, and watches as it falls into the dusty ground. "What? My cravat?"

"I need you to take off your cravat, Enjolras," a bare-necked Combeferre orders, "so that we can use it for a bandage. The rest of you as well."

Enjolras' fingers feel numb and clumsy as he struggles to undo the knot on his cravat. Finally, he gets it untied, and hands it to Joly. Somehow, he's traveled closer to where Joly and Combeferre are squatting around Grantaire, who is -

Well. He looks like he's been shot, and it's not a good look on any one, really.

"How is it?" Grantaire says.

Joly has pried Grantaire’s fingers away from his leg, and is pressing on the wound with the wadded up cravats. Grantaire's blood is dark and foreboding against the brightly bundled colored silk.

"Has the wound increased my looks?” Grantaire asks, face turned towards Enjolras and away from Joly. “Enjolras, I must thank you, for surely you intended to broaden my horizons when you decided that it would be just the thing to lodge this bullet in my leg. What was it that made you decide to finally do it? Was it my comment something I said? Or was it simply the desire to let your fellow man drink from every side of the cup of life? That did not make sense, forgive me, the bleeding home of a bullet in my leg - are you trying to hurt me more, Jolllly of the four wings, or just to stop the flow of blood? I feel like your goal may be the latter, but you are achieving both. Now Enjolras, back to the subject of your motivation. Very well, the cup of life. I've drank from many cups, Enjolras, but none quite like a bullet in my calf. Did your infinite well of patience for me finally run short? Did -"

"I didn't mean to," Enjolras gulps, "to shoot you."

"We all know that," Joly says.

Grantaire looks as if he's about to say something, but then Joly does something with the bandages and he simply groans. "Could you be more gentle?"

"I," Joly says (the color in his cheeks is returning, but the rest of his face is still wax) "I am doing everything I can, Grantaire, but since you were shot there will be some minor discomfort."

"Minor my a-," Grantaire says, but Joly interrupts him to tell Enjolras to go and see if Courfeyrac or Jehan have anything on them that could be used for bandages, and Enjras doesn't hear the rest of the comment. Perhaps it's just as well.

"Our shirts," Courfeyrac says. "They're cotton, and can be torn into strips."

Enjolras nods, and begins to unbutton his waistcoat.

From where he's lying, Grantaire whistles, and Enjolras feels his face going red enough to match Bahorel's waistcoat.

Once his own waistcoat is unbuttoned and hanging loose from his shoulders, Enjolras is able to pull the bottom of his shirt out of his trousers, and begins to tear it into strips. Thanks to what must be the intervention if every saint in heaven, Grantaire makes no more comments. Perhaps he's saving them for later.

“Here,” he says to Joly, and awkwardly holds out the makeshift bandages.

“Thanks,” Combeferre says, as he and Joly begin wrapping up Grantaire’s leg.

It’s quickly decided that a hospital is rather out of the question - for one, the nature of Grantaire’s wound would cause some rather unfortunate questions about why he was shot, and they can’t afford to be arrested for dueling or training to fight in a planned armed uprising.

“Can we take him to your flat, Enjolras?” Joly asks. “It’s closest, and I don’t want to risk moving him more than necessary.”

“Of course," says Enjolras. Grantaire has stayed there before; it won't be far from the norm. Aside form the bullet wound in Grantaire's leg, that is.

“Good,” Joly says, shaking his arms so that the sleeves he pushed up to his elbows billow and drop to his wrists. “Bahorel, do you want to carry him?”

“ What?” Grantaire exclaims. “I can carry myself, thank you!”

Grantaire leans to the side, and tries to lever himself up with his arms. He very nearly gets himself off the ground, but when he tries to put weight on his leg, he collapses back downward with a cry of pain.

“Alright then,” he says, uncharacteristically brief in his speech, “I’ll be carried.”

“Yep,” Bahorel says, and squats by Grantaire. “Sit up and wrap your arms around my neck. Then I can grab your legs - don’t worry, Joly, I’ll avoid the wound.”

Grantaire follows Bahorel’s instructions, but complains about the fact that he has to be carried as he does. “One would think that I am an invalid, or that I have the cholera, which I assure you I do not. I will be avoided for days, weeks, until my imaginary illness has passed, and by then I will be quite bereft of partners to play dominoes with.”

“You’re not likely to play dominoes for a while,” Combeferre says grimly, “Especially if the bullet hit bone.”

Grantaire scowls at him, and resumes his monologue.

At first - as is usual, really - Enjolras finds himself annoyed by Grantaire’s ramblings about whatever comes to mind, but for now the stream-of-consciousness narrative is a reassurance that Grantaire is not too badly hurt, that Enjolras didn’t - Enjolras stops thinking about that, and focuses on finding his footing on the damp cobblestones. He has no idea how Bahorel hasn’t fallen over by now, what with him carrying a whole extra person.

Grantaire’s speech continues for a while longer, but by the time they are at Enjolras' flat he’s pale and silent, which worries Enjolras - Grantaire is always talking, even if it’s just letting his thoughts drip from his tongue with no intervention between the idea and the voiced comment. To hear his silence is disconcerting.

Only Joly has accompanied Enjolras, Grantaire, and Bahorel to Enjolras’s flat. The others wanted to come, but were dissuaded when reminded just how small Enjolras’s flat is - even with the few of them, it’s quite crowded.

Enjolras sees his friends looking around for a place to put Grantaire (he keeps his flat sparsely furnitured, and there’s little more than a bed and a desk), so he gestures toward the bad. “Just put him on the bed."

Bahorel nods, and sets Grantaire down.

“Many thanks,” Grantaire says, “for being my noble steed. Truly, you have carried me through the vast jungles of Paris with valor and strength.”

Bahorel laughs, and grins. “I have to leave now,” he says, “I have a law class to avoid. Recover rapidly!”

“I will try!” Grantaire says, and then turns to wink at Enjolras. “But not too hard, if it means living night and day with you!"

“Alright,” Joly says, and holds up a pair of what look like tweezers. “We need to remove the bullet. Normally I’d ask my patient to drink some brandy, but -”

Grantaire nods. “I shall endeavor not to scream. Too much.”

“Hold his legs, Enjolras,” Joly says, “so that he doesn’t kick me.”

“I would never!” Grantaire protests. Enojolras holds his legs anyway.

Joly unwinds the bandages, and frowns at the sight of the blood that’s still sluggishly seeping out of Grantaire’s leg. “Needs stitches,” he mutters to himself, before counting down, and beginning to do ... something with the tweezers and Grantiare's leg. Enjolras has to look away.

Grantaire cries out, and arches against the bed, eyes held tightly shut. If Enjolras wasn’t holding onto his legs, Joly would have probably gotten a foot to the face. As it is, Enjolras nearly is kicked in the eye, having been holding onto Grantaire far too lightly to be effective.

Enjolras finds himself muttering to no one once again. “Just a little while longer…”

Joly is doing the same thing, reassurances and curses mingling in the air. "I've almost got it..."

Finally he’s done, and the bullet is set on Enjolras’s bedside table with a harmless _plink!_

The reason that Grantaire’s body went slack, it turns out, is that he fainted.

“Good,” Joly says. “Now he won’t fight me when I stitch up the wound.”

Enjolras bites his lip, and tastes blood. Grantaire looks far too close to dead for him to be comfortable. _How could I have shot him?_ Enjolras thinks. _How did I not look to see if he was there?_

True, Grantaire had stood up at just the wrong moment, but Enjolras had been talking to Combeferre, and had been distracted.

Maybe, Enjolras thinks, if he’d just paid slightly more attention, they wouldn’t be here. Grantaire wouldn’t be lying unconscious on his bed, with Joly quickly stitching up the hole that Enjolras’s bullet had torn in his calf.

Grantaire doesn’t show any signs of waking up - it just looks like he’s fallen into a deep sleep instead of a faint - so Joly, looking anxiously at the gathering darkness outside, warns Enjolras of the dangers of infection or reopening the wound and leaves them with a few pages of notes scribbled inside the cover on one of Enjolras’s books. Paper had been in short supply.

Enjolras tries to pull a blanket out from under Grantaire’s sleeping body, but fails.

Instead he strips down to his shirt, and slides into the bad next to Grantaire. It’s a tight fit, and he hopes that he doesn't jar Grantaire's leg in the night.

He dreams.

They’re in the park that’s adjacent to the de Courfeyrac properties, so that they can learn to shoot better. There’s a slight breeze, and sunlight is streaming through the trees. They’ve set up paper targets to aim at, and brought a picnic.

Combeferre is telling him something, something about his aim, or how he’s holding the pistol, and Enjolras feels dread creeping into his being.

He looks down his arm, and aims, and shoots, and Grantaire falls.

This time, the hole is in his chest instead of his leg.

Enjolras runs over (why is no one else going to help? Why has no one else noticed?), and tries desperately to stop the flow of blood from Grantaire’s chest. It’s sticky, and coating his hands, and it’s so, so red.

He wakes up with Grantaire desperately trying to shake him awake, and a scream on his lips.

“What?” Grantaire says. “What’s wrong?”

Enjolras gulps, and says, “Nothing. Nothing, it was just a dream. I’m fine.”

“You were muttering about blood and bullets,” Grantaire says. “You are not fine.”

“I’m guilty, alright!” Enjolras says, gaining some kind of twisted sense of relief as they fall back into their old pattern of arguments. “I shot you, and you collapsed, and it was my fault!”

Grantaire scoffs. “ Your fault? I was wandering around by the targets!”

“I’m the one who shot you,” Enjolras says. “It was me. ”

“Did you mean to do it?”

“No! Of course not! Why would you think -”

“Then it’s not your fault! It was an accident! I was being an idiot!”

Engolras glares at him. It’s slightly difficult - Enjolras’s bed is narrow, they’re side by side and Enjolras doesn’t want to jar Grantaire’s leg. “I was being an idiot more than you - I’m the one who shot you!”

Grantaire sighs. “We were both being idiots, and I have a slight wound -”

“A pretty big wound, Grantaire. Don’t act like it’s nothing, you couldn’t even walk on it -”

Grantaire shrugs. “I’ll get over it. And if not, I can get a cane as marvelous as our friend Jollly’s.”

Enjolras buries his head in his hands. “ Why aren’t you more angry?!”

“I was stabbed three months ago,” Grantaire says, and awkwardly pats Enjolras on the back, “and now I'm fine. I’ve gotten out of plenty of scrapes. I’ll be fine, and I know that you wouln't have shot me unless it was accidental.”

“That fact that you were stabbed and recovered isn’t a good thing, Grantaire.”

“Would you rather I get stabbed and not recover?”

“No!” Enjolras says. “I quite like you alive!”

“Me too,” Grantaire says, and then, “May I kiss you?”

Enjolras sits up. “What? Now?"

“To make up for the wound," Grantaire says, grinning. "Perhaps the terrible pain will be overcome by a kiss."

Enjolras rolls his eyes, and kisses Grantaire.

It’s quite nice, and he thinks he’d like to do it again, but he remembers Grantaire’s comment. “Does your leg hurt that much?”

“Down to a dull throb, I’m afraid,” Grantaire says. “Perhaps it will get better if you kiss me again.”

Enjolras does so.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos make me super happy! <3


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